Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [73]
'It's assumed that when a person is confirmed into the church that he or she is by then capable of moral discernment and action.'
'Yes, but are they? It's rather arbitrary, isn't it? On Tuesday, this person is morally inculpable and on Wednesday, because they're a new age or have taken a vow, they're culpable. How? Does something change in the brain?'
'But what is one to do?' said Father Joel. 'You could make the same argument about age limits for driving a car. The person who is fifteen and not allowed to drive is no different when the next day is his sixteenth birthday and he is allowed to drive. Obviously such demarcations are imperfect. But that is the case with human affairs.'
'Ah, yes,' said the man thoughtfully. 'Human affairs.' He was silent for so long that Father Joel thought the discussion must be at an end and was about to excuse himself, but as he started to rise the man said, 'Take, for example, a situation where a parent is alcoholic and torments his family.
Nothing criminal, merely makes their lives wretched from waking to sleeping every day for many years. We think this is wrong, or at the very least that it would be better if it stopped, and we understand that the final if not sole responsibility rests with the drinker. But what if his parents were alcoholics, who similarly tormented him when he was small and weak, until he was deformed so that he hadn't the strength to be any better than they had been? Can we say he had any real moral choice about his actions towards his own family?'
'But no one is ever truly morally deformed. God can always heal you.'
'Mm. So your responsibility is to pray to be healed and hope it works.'
"That's a rather cynical way of expressing it, but essentially yes.'
'And if it doesn't work, it's not God's fault.'
'It can't be. By definition.'
'Rather a harsh creed.'
'We believe in free will,' said Father Joel simply. 'That is a harsh creed.'
The man was silent again. 'Don't you?'
'I don't know. I act as if I do, so I suppose I must. But sometimes& Does an evil act mean the person behind it is evil? Isn't he just human? Doesn't he deserve mercy?'
'Does he want mercy?'
'Ah.' The man pulled at his lower lip. 'You're right. One can't just force one's own supposedly good actions on someone.'
'It would be arrogant. Pride is considered the greatest of the sins because the proud man puts himself at the centre of the universe. Or, conversely, at its very edge. In either case, he is all that matters. He sees the whole rest of existence as somehow less real than he is, and therefore subject to his will and manipulation.'
'But someone has to take responsibility. Someone has to say,"No more of this".'
Father Joel looked down at his hands. 'I can't argue against that,' he said meekly. 'Only& one has to be very careful. You know, for priests, the insidious temptation is to "be good". Do you know what I mean? Not actually to save, just to be able to think of oneself as a saviour.'
The man looked at him sharply. What unsettling eyes he had. In the soft light inside the church they were blue as the sky, and held some of the airless cold of the far reaches of that sky. 'Yes,' he said, 'I know what you mean.'
When Rust came looking for the Doctor, he found him in the courtyard at Owl, sitting on one of the low-slung branches of the oak, his feet about a metre above the bricks of the courtyard. He was rocking slightly as if he were on a porch swing, and gazing up into the leaves. Rust folded his arms and leaned in the doorway, waiting. After a bit, he cleared his throat. The Doctor blinked at him, then smiled.
'Lieutenant Rust. Good morning. I've been expecting you.'
'Have you now?'
'Well, I did give your name to the two gentlemen who helped me last night.'
'Yes,' said Rust. 'They told me.' He came over to the tree. 'From the way they described things, you were kind of a mess.'
'No,' said the Doctor brightly. 'As you can see, I'm fine. Just a little stiffness in my left hand.'
'Uh-huh.'
T had a small scalp wound,' said the